Sharon Bradford Franklin

Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity Policy, Open Technology Institute

As the director of surveillance and cybersecurity policy for New America's Open Technology Institute, Sharon Bradford Franklin leads OTI's work on issues involving government surveillance, encryption, cybersecurity, and government access to data. She also serves as a non-resident fellow at Georgetown’s Center for National Security and the Law.

Prior to joining OTI, Franklin served as executive director of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal agency that reviews counterterrorism programs to ensure that they include appropriate safeguards for privacy and civil liberties. Her work included reviewing government surveillance programs, cybersecurity, and other counterterrorism activities. Previously, Franklin served as senior counsel at the Constitution Project, a nonprofit legal watchdog group, where she worked on a range of issues involving national security and privacy and civil liberties, including surveillance policies, cybersecurity, government secrecy, individual privacy, and detention policies. She also served as a member of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee for the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Previously, Franklin served as a trial attorney in the Housing & Civil Enforcement Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, worked on civil rights policy matters as a special counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission, and served as executive director of the Washington Council of Lawyers. She began her legal career as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Jane R. Roth. Franklin graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School.